Death Takes a Holiday

Mitchell Leisen: Death Takes a Holiday (US 1934). Fredric March (Prince Sirki / Death) and Gail Patrick (Rhoda Fenton).

La morte in vacanza / Strange Holiday / Kuoleman lepopäivä / Döden tar semester. 

    US 1934. PC: Paramount Productions Inc. P: E. Lloyd Sheldon.

    D: Mitchell Leisen. SC: Maxwell Anderson, Gladys Lehman. Based on the play La morte in vacanza (1923) di Alberto Casella e della versione in inglese (1929) di Walter Ferris. DP: Charles Lang. PD: Hans Dreier, Ernst Fegté. M: Bernhard Kaun, John Leipold, Milan Roder. C: Fredric March (Principe Sirki/la Morte), Evelyn Venable (Grazia), Guy Standing (duca Lambert), Katharine Alexander (Alda), Kent Taylor (Corrado), Gail Patrick (Rhoda), Helen Westley (Stephanie), Kathleen Howard (Principessa Maria), Henry Travers (barone Cesarea), G. P. Huntley Jr. (Eric). 

    Soundtrack: Jean Sibelius: "Valse triste" (1903) op. 44, for the play Death by Arvid Järnefelt. Frédéric Chopin: Étude in E Major, Op. 10 No. 3 and "Grande valse brillante" in A-flat major, Op. 34 No. 1. Johann Strauss: "Wein, Weib und Gesang", Op. 333, "Wiener Blut" Op. 354.

    79 min

    Language: English.

    Helsinki premiere: 26 Aug 1934 Capitol, distributed by Paramount Pictures.

    35 mm print from: UCLA Film & Television Archive.

    Courtesy of: Universal, a Comcast Company / Park Circus.

    E-subtitles in Italian n.c.

    Il Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna 2026: Easy Living with Mitchell Leisen.

    Introduced by Ehsan Khoshbakht.

    Viewed at Cinema Jolly, 21 June 2026.

Ehsan Khoshbakht (Bologna 2026): "A love-is-stronger-than-death narrative rendered in a literal manner: Fredric March, playing Death, temporarily assumes human form to join a group of guests in a palazzo where he falls in love with the owner’s daughter, Grazia, played by Evelyn Venable. During the Ex-terminating Angel’s unpaid leave in Italy, people survive horrible accidents and the mortality rate drops to zero, but the film asks what the ultimate point of falling in love with Death is. Simply dying? The story is based, second hand, on a three-act comedy, successful across two continents, by Italian author Alberto Casella. Adapted for the screen by Maxwell Anderson and Gladys Lehman from an English version written by Walter Ferris (later remade in 1998 as Meet Joe Black), the film makes no attempt to conceal its stage-bound origins. In fact, it seems content to work within the limitations of a play. Leisen’s favourite art director, Ernst Fegté, designed the sets, and thanks to the work of a man not unfamiliar with the avant-garde (he had designed Black and Tan), the film can stand firmly between a dark-old-house yarn and a symbolic tale of spiritual transcendence. Following the success of Fredric March’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the fantastical and the morbid were fertile ground for asking serious questions about self and society. Indeed, Mitchell Leisen’s film – one of the most unusual studio productions of the 1930s – carries a philosophical undertone that it does not hide. It may be one of the first instances of a Hollywood film self-consciously boasting about the seriousness of its subject. Yet, Leisen, disarmingly, unrolls a mishmash of existentialism, controlled verbal comedy, and “deadly” double-talk – in the process outdoing The Seventh Seal’s humourless take on Death on the roam." Ehsan Khoshbakht

AA: In Death Takes a Holiday, Mitchell Leisen is at home in the land of the cinefantastique. An icy wind from beyond and an enormous darkness out of this world make their presence felt.

The poetic power of such impressions is diluted by overacting and an overload of strident, contrived dialogue. Nevertheless, Death Takes a Holiday is a distinguished exercise in the play of darkness and light, literal and metaphorical. 

The movie belongs to a worthy lineage, including Körkarlen, Der müde Tod, Macario, Det sjunde inseglet, De nåede faergen and Danza macabra. Japanese kaidan stories and Vertigo belong to the legacy (Madeleine as Hitchcock's Lady Wakasa and Prince Sirki), as well as vampire tales.

Frank Borzage ended his Three Comrades (US 1938) with a "love stronger than death" ghost vision, defying the warrior ghost ending of Triumph des Willens, still haunting Hans Jürgen Syberberg in Hitler.

Leisen's unforgettable finale conveys the frisson of the Wagnerian Liebestod, as in Tristan and Isolde, but the preceding film does not quite support such metaphysical grandeur.

The low contrast of the print which looks like a blow-up from 16 mm raises the question whether Death of a Holiday is another casualty of the way Paramount used to have with its nitrate treasures.